A chat with Meg Gibson-Jones, Run Talk Run Bristol
This week, we were lucky enough to catch up with Meg from Run Talk Run Bristol. This is her journey…
Tell us a bit about your running and/or mental health journey so far.
Hello I’m Meg and I’m a part of Run Talk Run Bristol. I say I’m our social secretary, that’s a self-appointed, made-up title which means I’m the person who suggests we go to the pub/pizza/park after a run. Running and mental health have been intertwined for a long time for me and not always in a good way. When I was in my late teens I experienced an eating disorder (ED), as part of this I used exercise (including running) as a way to maintain an unhealthily low weight. As my relationship with food recovered, so did my physical health and just before my eighteenth birthday I was discharged from the CAMHS services that I’d visited for the four years of my ED. I moved off to university, in a new city, with no visible signs of my illness. A fresh start, and with that I blanked out the previous four years of my life as if they had never happened.
What brought you to Run Talk Run specifically?
I stumbled across Run Talk Run on Instagram, when a friend of mine posted about it. I had been planning on going for about three weeks before I actually plucked up the courage to show up. It was funny because I wanted to go to meet new people and hopefully make friends, but what was stopping me going was the fear of meeting new people. Go figure? I’d given up running for about a year previously after I’d ran the London marathon. Training for the marathon took some of the joy out of running for me, and it became very much about numbers and pushing through discomfort. Don’t get me wrong, running the marathon was one of the most rewarding, enjoyable experiences of my life, but I guess I had achieved a huge challenge which I’ll probably never top (because frankly, once was enough for me for run 26.2 miles in one go) and therefore my motivation to run just left me. If I wasn’t going to achieve, what would be the point in running?
In what ways does running (and RTR!) help you?
Being a part of Run Talk Run has quite honestly changed my life. Here’s some of the reasons why:
1) “We don’t give a damn about pace”. For someone whose brain likes achievement and numbers, the consistent 5km distance which we cover at the pace of the slowest member that week was a difficult concept for me to grasp. But it was this detaching from a “goal” that really helped me to get my running mojo back, learning for the first time to tune into how running could make me feel – the freedom, space and opportunity just to “be”.
2) A safe space to talk about mental health. As I alluded to above, following my physical recovery I decided to pretend my ED hadn’t happened, after all nobody knew me at university and I wanted to move on from what had been a stressful, painful, isolated existence. This meant that for many years I spoke to very few people about my illness. The secrecy allowed part of it to live-on inside me, a beneath the surface controlling and limiting of my ability to experience life. Through listening to others, including Jess, I learnt to trust that I didn’t need to carry a “dirty secret” around with me. I practised. Each week I’d take a deep breath and maybe mention my brief spell of “illness”, and when nobody recoiled I may dip a toe a little further, until the point I was able to fully articulate my experience, to someone who wasn’t practically family, for the first time ever. Through this process I came to realise that perhaps I wasn’t as “better” as I thought I was, or maybe that recovery wasn’t the linear process of putting back on the weight that my teenage self had wanted to believe. For the first time it dawned on me that I was worth more than the life I was allowing myself to lead - I decided to re-enter therapy.
3) The people and community: I really like the notion of just showing-up, for one another, for ourselves, each week. It’s the unspoken “I got you” that we demonstrate by just being there. It’s cool and comforting that there are RTR groups across the globe, so I know wherever I am on any given week, I could turn up, support and be supported, globally! I joined in the hope to widen my social circle. I’ve made best friends. People who I trust wholeheartedly, with whom there is no pretence, we can be every part of ourselves together and it’s wonderful.
What would you say to someone who was nervous about coming to a Run Talk Run?
I’d say it’s completely understandable, I was nervous myself the first time I walked up to the meeting point, that’s why it took me three attempts of taking my kit to work and trudging home with it still pristine before I actually joined and ran. But that initial discomfort was SO WORTH IT. I’ve found a space, our space, where we can turn up as we are and know we’re going to be wholeheartedly accepted. I suppose that’s probably what I was nervous about, turning up and not quite fitting in, or there being a really tight group which I’d feel slightly on the outside of. But that’s the special thing about Run Talk Run, there is no “fitting in” because it’s not about “being” anything; you don’t have to be a “good enough” runner, or an “impressive enough” person, just turn up each week with open ears, an open mind and be you, and that’s more than enough.
Come join us each Wednesday 6.15pm leaving from Starks Fitness Gym, 2 Glass Wharf, Bristol.